Can aoe3 community stop prejudge the Inca civilisation?

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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A lot of prejudice exist in the community against inca civ and players.

Whenever someone is playing inca, he is called lame. Despite millions of nerfs, the situation has not changed much, and that resulted in never ending nerfs on Inca. At this point I believe the devs are intentionally making the inca weaker than average to abide by the player base.

Inca is ONE of my main civs. I do play other civs like China, India, Lakota, Haude and Hausa. My elo with Inca is not any higher than elo with other civs. So at least for me Inca is not out performing any other civs.

The reality is that Inca has been one of the worst civs statistically, since a few patches ago. See freefoodparty’s stats. But Inca is always the most nerfed civ every single patch.

The state of inca now:

Plumed spearman doesn’t outperform any spearman. It is literally way worse than Aztec puma spearman now. People complain it is tanky, but just ignore that it is rather expensive and has low damage and weaker multipliers. Now it is made more expensive than a freakin Janissary, I don’t think it is reasonable by any perspective, it is just “hate nerf”, only way to explain it.

Jungle bows: always one of the worst bows because of really low hp and mediocre damage, and a mediocre multiplier before card. So this unit is not considered strong by any means, there comes the nerf for no reason. And the nerf was not even in PUP, it was specifically added in the patch xD

Chimu runners, this unit has been over nerfed so much. They are just a strictly worse version of coyote runner now. They even trade slightly worse than hussar, while having lower ranged resistance and speed, and suffer more from area damage due to their collision size. The damage is nerfed, cost nerfed, multiplier nerfed too, might as well remove this unit.

Huaraca is usable for 1 patch and now back to shit again. Plus culverin having bonus vs siege unit now, and they only do multiplier against heavy infantry. Huaraca this patch is weaker than ever.

Inca economy has been nerfed too, on plaza and kancha house.

The degree of nerf is mind blowing. British is considered op for a long time and the result is nerfing house by 5 wood. Carolean too, an apparently over performing unit and the result is also a 5 resource nerf. Inca, out of nowhere, have both chimus and spearman nerfed by a whopping 10 resources each. (Bolas also got the same treatment a few patches ago and became unusable).

The only viable option left is priests, and that one is getting hp nerf too.

So what is the dev trying to achieve? Make a civ unwinnable? Why do they design this civ in the first place then?

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Inca is fundamentally flawed to the very core of its design. So all it ever gets is bandaid nerfs that never address any of the core issues. Most of this is necessary and deserved to stop it from being pure gimmicky cancer. It really needs a complete rework to make it viable.

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which one are you refering to cause I am pretty sure the poison nerf was in the PUP.

The Jungle bow will still do their purpose with the nerf since it only affects damage vs cav, and the unit still deals like 2 more damage to cav compared to skirm, though the multiplier could use some fine tuning if its too weak

On the plummed spearman the unit is a tricky one for balance, its basically a near perfect middle ground between rodelero and a pike, which is a tricky balance

The unit has about the same melee HP as Rods ( 212 vs 225) with upgradeable armour, with the upgrade it has the same melee HP, the same amount of damage vs cav (39 vs 38.5) and the ability to siege, which the rod cant. That is a very potent package.

The most comparable unit to the spearman is the rajput, which has more damage but less HP and also cost the same total resource but more wood heavy, so if that there is any indication this is where the unit should be

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Personally, I think Inca need some new units added, like what was done for Ottomans (though in this case it would be to make balancing the civ possible rather than to remove a well designed weakness). I believe there’s historical records of the Inca using artillery. Access to some artillery pieces would really help things.

Balancing any artillery-less civ can get extremely difficult. Lakota and Aztec had valid reasons not to have artillery, so we’re stuck with that as the case for them, Inca didn’t need to be like that, so it’s unnecessarily difficult. No need to make things harder than they need to be.

Patch after patch Huaracas have either done their job too poorly or too well. Arrow knights aren’t really an artillery unit, they substitute for Culvs and Mortars, but they aren’t really artillery. Huaracas try to split the line between a culv, a falc, a skirm and a mortar. That doesn’t seem to work.

Plumbed Spears try to be a pike and a musk, I’ve seen them be an issue in late game in team after all the upgrades. They just cut through our walls like butter and killed our eco. The tanky-ness with high siege and speed makes taking them down obnoxious.

Jungle bows are, or at least were great, so you’re incorrect on that point.

I understand your frustration, but basically every part of Inca is annoying to play against. It’s kinda the Japan problem, back in the day (and maybe still now) people found Japan to be super annoying. There’s a level where “super annoying to play against” almost becomes worse than “op” because it makes the game no longer fun.

What I’d consider doing:

Add something like a light cannon or a flaming arrow. This would probably want to more like the flaming arrow because it would be needed in age 3. I’d probably give it 28 range with +2 in age 4 and +2 in age 5.

Make Plumbed Spears more like a Rod but with 5 base speed and more HP. Less siege but a bit better vs cav and add 1 melee range. It’s cost would need to go down. Better vs cav than they are now, but worse vs other stuff. The RoF upgrade makes them kinda too good late game in their current form, and I think that’s why their cost was probably increased (though obviously this creates problems for them in the early game).

Bolas become a ranged Shock Infantry, and possibly get a slight speed increase. Maybe to 4.25. They’ll become way better if inca has artillery as they were basically made to defend artillery, but given no artillery to defend.

Huaracas because more like a Longbowmen with Siege archery. They tickle buildings at long range and counter heavy infantry and light cavalry at long range with very low base damage (ie higher bonuses, lower attack and possibly higher hp than normal). With this the cost could become f/c and they could be reworked to be 1pop. A low damage, high hp skirm with long range could be balanced more easily.

With an actual artillery piece Chimus could be altered a bit without totally kneecaping the civ. As they were, Chimu Runners were super annoying.

The civ was designed based off Aztec but with elements from AoE2 that work exactly counter to AoE3’s design. I’m not sure that’s capable of existing without either being garbage or lame. The civ needs a redesign to be less annoying.

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this is unfortunately true. every unit has some gimmick, every building has a gimmick, even llamas have a gimmick. Its not that the civ couldn’t be positive or that everything has to be nerfed perpetually - but rather all the little quirks and silly stuff gets in the way of balancing the civ

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I don’t know how historically correct this would be, but I think the Incas and Aztecs could have something similar to the Scorpions from AOE2.

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I was talking about functionally rather than necessarily form. Flaming arrows kinda counter Infantry, Artillery, and Buildings at the cost of not being great at any of those things.

The unit could look like a Scorpion, that’s fine, I just think similar stats and behavior to a Flaming Arrow would be the kind of artillery Inca could use. Obviously you could argue that Light Cannons are better, but Inca will need access to artillery in age 3 if you redesign the Huaracas into something that can actually be balanced properly.

Additionally, I think giving Inca a more standard “European artillery” unit (like a Falc) would be too good. You want softer anti infantry than what falcs are because Bolas/falc + culvs would get too good. I think a softer “blended artillery” reduces the risk of issues a bit. Start with something like Flaming Arrows stat-wise and go from there.

Edit: seeing Scorpions in AoE3 would be pretty cool, so using a similar model could be fun even if it behaves more normally for an AoE3 artillery unit.

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I wish the developers had based themselves a bit on the Incas from WOL

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Id like to be on the wrong side of history for once to say I love the civ. Its like native ports (all roads lead back to 3tc booming for me). I like the concepts of the civ. I like fast responsive units, being a sneaky bastard and booming. I like the feel and having visited places of inca i just gel with it. Yet I agree huaraca cant be “all cannon types for a discount” but then we get random nerfs to jungles. And chimu killing halbs. But i think the truth is inca has so many options and gimmicks its so hard not to overboost something. I think we gotta let them be weak to cannons so they cant uber turtle or find a way to make tambos, map control more meaningful and have the army zip around(as irl) to defend. Maybe let them have natives be more important (not the rush tho).

Im kind of at a loss tbh. Love playing inca but yeah watching spears beat musk or chimu beat pikes totally understand the frustration. I just want to praise inti in peace

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Oh mate
 why the need to create a post like that?.. I modified it a little, I hope it doesn’t bother you.

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Why tf do you edit my post, i meed to create such a post because i can’t play inca any more. It is over nerfed.

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Na, with the Tupac Amaru card is ok
you convert your Inca army in a industrial European army


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Janissary- We are not the same and i am stronger.
Plumed Spearman- We are the same in value.
Janissary- facepalm

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Guys this is not my original post. It is edited by elite rifleman without me knowing before that. This is basically his post. Idk why he has the right to remove my edit history

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we can see the edit history, it doesnt seem to really change anything, unless you are saying something fundamental was changed about the post

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I totally get why you’d find it kinda unsettling. It looks like it was largely based around the use of the words based on “discriminate”.

In the US the word has taken on highly negative connotations for historical reasons. It also has certain uses in the law (I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t get into that here).

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From Oxford Languages

distinction in the treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of ethnicity, #### age, or disability.

“existing employment policies discriminate against women”
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It seems as though the changes were to remove those words and what could have been taken as an accusation of bad behavior against “loud European streamers”, whether you intended it that way or not.

There is another definition, but I don’t think it was the one you intended:

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More from Oxford Languages

recognize a distinction; differentiate.

“babies can discriminate between different facial expressions of emotion”
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From your spelling of “Civilisation” I can assume you aren’t from the US (we us a z ‘round here), so I’m guessing you didn’t mean it in the way some could have interpreted it.

Edit: the censor messed with Oxford’s definition. I also had to fix some formatting issues.

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No he removed the final edit. You cant see it anymore. You can only see the first 5

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People just refuse to learn Inca civ, so they don’t know how to counter them and end up raging as a consequence.

Best Inca Combo by fair is the plumed spearmen and chimu mix, because it melts everything other than heavy infantry (musk, samurai, doppel are good counters).

Just take the time to learn the civ and stop whinning.

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Agree. People refuse to accept this civ. It has been my fav civ since DE. Inca really struggled against musks, with cannins behind, since huaraca sucks. More and more non-musk civs now have access to musk and musk is one of the most used unit in the game so inca feels bad

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You aren’t making full use of Inca. They are actually great vs musks, you send the native alliances age 1 card and pick Zapotec then send all of the native buff cards. Do this while kancha booming. I have defeated many an Otto rush this way.

And I am the ONLY one I know of who uses carib blowgunners, which are basically counter skirmisher units. Perfect answer to the annoying ‘skirm goon’ combination which it seems 99% of all Dutch/German players INSIST on making every game. I haven’t found a way to make priestesses viable yet, mostly because the micro required is way way way beyond anything I’m capable of.